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New book: Dogmatism: On the History of a Scholarly Vice (open access)

Dogmatism is generally regarded as a bad thing. For scientists in particular, there are few more disconcerting vices than dogmatism. But what exactly does this term mean? Where does it come from and how does its centuries-long history resonate in current debates? A new open access book, co-authored by Herman Paul and Alexander Stoeger, traces the history of dogmatism as a scholarly vice term. Starting in ancient Greece, but with… Read More »New book: Dogmatism: On the History of a Scholarly Vice (open access)

New article: “Objectivity, honesty, and integrity: How American scientists talked about their virtues, 1945–2000”

What kind of people make good scientists? What personal qualities do scholars say their peers should exhibit? And how do they express these expectations? A new, co-authored article from the “Scholarly Vices” team, accepted for publication in the journal History of Science, explores these issues by mapping the kinds of virtues discussed by American scientists between 1945 and 2000. Our wide-ranging comparative analysis maps scientific virtue talk across three distinct disciplines –… Read More »New article: “Objectivity, honesty, and integrity: How American scientists talked about their virtues, 1945–2000”

New partner project: “Scholarly Virtues and Vices in Nineteenth-Century Russian/Ukrainian Historiography”

A grant from the Dutch Research Council will allow Viacheslav Grekov (Kharkiv) to join the “Scholarly Vices” project in Leiden with a one-year partner project on scholarly virtues and vices in nineteenth-century Russian/Ukrainian historiography. Grekov will examine how scholarly vices (dogmatism, prejudice, bias) and their positive counterparts (virtues like objectivity, impartiality, carefulness) were invoked in some of the most politically charged debates in nineteenth-century Russian/Ukrainian scholarship: the issue of ‘Rus’ history… Read More »New partner project: “Scholarly Virtues and Vices in Nineteenth-Century Russian/Ukrainian Historiography”

Workshop on Persistence, Transmission, and Circulation of Scholarly Vices

On August 23-25, 2023, the Leiden University Institute for History will host a three-day workshop on “Scholarly Vices: Persistence, Transmission, Circulation.” The event will bring together fifteen experts from across Europe and North America to discuss how and why scholarly vices persisted over time. Among the speakers are Richard Newhauser (Tempe, Arizona), Sorana Corneanu (Bucharest), Sari Kivistö (Tampere), Jamie Cohen-Cole (Washington D.C.), Arnoud Visser (Utrecht), Marian Füssel (Göttingen), Lukas Verburgt… Read More »Workshop on Persistence, Transmission, and Circulation of Scholarly Vices

Students ‘disciplining’ the cameral sciences

By Anne Por In late 1794, the then twenty-year-old former cameralism student Ferdinand Beneke criticized the expectations placed onto students regarding their choice of study. In his extensive diary he explains that he regrets the decision he made when he was fifteen to study both law and cameralism instead of just cameralism. He made this decision because he wished to be useful to the state, and because ‘properly’ joining the military was… Read More »Students ‘disciplining’ the cameral sciences

The Icarus Flight of Speculation 

Why did nineteenth-century German historians and physicists habitually warn against vices that they believed philosophers in particular embodied: speculation, absence of common sense, and excessive systematizing? Sjang ten Hagen and Herman Paul answer this question in their essay, “The Icarus Flight of Speculation: Philosophers’ Vices as Perceived by Nineteenth-Century Historians and Physicists,” published in open access in a special issue of the journal Metaphilosophy. 

How academics review books (and each other)

By Sjang ten Hagen. This blog was originally published on the LSE Impact Blog on 1 December 2022. The editorial guidelines for academic book reviews regularly instruct authors to focus on the content of the works being reviewed, rather than the authors. But, how far does this hold true in practice? Drawing on evidence from historical book reviews, Sjang ten Hagen argues the personal has in fact played a prominent role in… Read More »How academics review books (and each other)

Topsport en wetenschap – en een beetje DWDD

Door Rembert Duine, hoogleraar Theory of Nanoscale Systems aan de Universiteit Utrecht en deeltijdhoogleraar Theory for spin-based nanoelectronics aan de TU Eindhoven. Er is al veel geschreven over wetenschap en topsport. Aan de ene kant maken sporters en hun teams steeds vaker gebruik van wetenschappers en hun wetenschappelijke inzichten, bijvoorbeeld met betrekking tot voeding. Ook worden sporters en wetenschappers vaak naast elkaar gezet:  “Wetenschap is topsport”, schreef Marcel Levi, voorzitter… Read More »Topsport en wetenschap – en een beetje DWDD

Writing the History of the Humanities: with a chapter on virtues and vices

Project leader Herman Paul has edited a volume entitled Writing the History of the Humanities: Questions, Themes, and Approaches (2022). The volume showcases a range of perspectives from which the history of the humanities can be written. One chapter is devoted specifically to virtues and vices. Focusing on Geisteswissenschaftler in late nineteenth-century Strasbourg, it examines what virtues they cared about, what vices they warned their students against, and how these… Read More »Writing the History of the Humanities: with a chapter on virtues and vices